Tech Talk: Wild fans, prepare for shift to digital tickets

Last week, the Minnesota Wild announced that, starting with the upcoming season, it would be switching to a digital ticketing system for season ticket holders. The Wild is the first pro sports team in Minnesota to mandate digital ticketing for season ticket holders.

Digital tickets as a concept aren’t new. Users can scan tickets and account cards for all sorts of events and functions into their smartphones now.

But the movement of digital authentication as a complete replacement for physical tickets or cards is starting to pick up.

Digital tickets

Each Wild season ticket holder will be issued a card, about the size of a credit card, that will hold his or her Wild account information. When the fan arrives at the game, the card can be scanned by an usher. A successful scan will produce a “seat locator” receipt for the fan, who can then access his or her seat.

Digital ticketing is thought to be more green, as thousands of tickets won’t need to be printed and mailed to ticket holders (although unless the seat location receipt is optional, I’m not sure how much more green the operation truly is).

The centralized approach to ticketing also is more convenient for season ticket holders, who now only need to remember to bring one item to the arena. I’ve heard from a variety of season ticket holders that grabbing the wrong set of game tickets from a large stack happens more often than you’d think.

Users can still print or forward individual game tickets through their Wild online account, so personal seat management and the secondary market shouldn’t be affected.

While the benefits of a digital system are reasonable, there’s been disappointment expressed from season ticket ticket holders who enjoy the souvenir ticket package sent out by the Wild before each season. As with all digital transitions, the group most greatly affected are usually collectors and those who enjoy the physical aspects of media.

Digitizing your cards

The card doesn’t make the ticketing operation entirely digital, but fans can scan the ticket QR codes from their online account into their smartphone.

In fact, digitizing other physical cards, like loyalty cards and credit cards, is a great way to cut down on card clutter.

Passbook for iOS and Google Wallet on Android can be used to store loyalty card numbers. The KeyRing, PassWallet and CardStar apps also are popular options for digitally consolidating loyalty cards.

I still support carrying physical payment cards, but eventually phones will replace that, too. Near-field communication technology and other wireless protocols will allow phones to act as a payment method.

Swiping phones at payment or transportation terminals already occurs in other parts of the world; it’s only a matter of time before we will be able to engage in commerce with only ID and a smartphone in our pockets.

This is the opinion of Times Digital Products Specialist Andrew Fraser. Follow him on Twitter @AndrewFraser.